Mars Experienced ‘Mega-Tsunami’ After Asteroid Slammed
An asteroid impact on Mars more than three billion years ago
Similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth, triggered a “mega-tsunami” on Mars, according to new research.
Resulting waves loomed hundreds of feet high and travelled around 1,000 miles
Carving out much of the surrounding landscape, according to scientists at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
The finding is based on an analysis of a 65-mile wide crater named Pohl in the northern lowlands.
Pohl is “positioned above catastrophic flood-eroded surfaces” formed about 3.4 billion years ago.
during a period of northern plains oceanic inundation and below the younger of two previously hypothesized mega-tsunami deposits,” the authors write in their paper.
At the time Mars was being bombarded with space rocks suggesting “a marine impact
likely formed the crater,” authors say.